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My people uprooted
Gives An Overview Of Bengal Society And Hindu-Muslim Relations In Bengal From The First Partition Of The Province In 1905 - Traces The Events Leading To The Partition Of The Province In 1947 - Describes The Persecution And The Exodus Of The Hindus From East Bengal In Different Phases - Analyses The Course Of Events Why Hindus Could Not Resist - Why There Was No Recipocal Movement As In Punjab - Why Bengali Hindus Swallowed The Insult And Ignonminy And Why Interested Quarters Sought To Obliterate This Sad Chapter Of History .
470 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 4, 2017
I read this under the title "A Suppressed Chapter in History: The Exodus of Hindus from East Pakistan and Bangladesh 1947-2006" but I'm pretty sure its the same text. Anyway, It is an important account, as it is pretty much the only Hindu nationalist account of the 1971 war and the demographic shift in Bengal in print in English. No doubt, there is some bias here, but I won't comment deeply on the historicity of it here... I think there is a lot of truth to this, despite the source. Its just something we don't hear that much about in the academic press because if we accept this narrative and make a few further inductions, it might lead to negative and politically incorrect conclusions about Islam. This is pretty much why Hindus in Bangladesh are such an ignored subject by academia, in my opinion. Because it is so easy to jump from there into real or percieved "Islamophobia" territory. In any case, its a pretty rare viewpoint on this in the English language archive on the 1971 war and the surrounding body of literature on the history of ethnic and religious dischord in Bengal. One which has a lot of truth which has yet to be assimlated into non-revisionist histories of Bengal.
September 5, 2019
This book is on Bengali Hindus exodus. Everyone should read it. We Indians are so ignorant about it and praise our leaders how great they were. Such a shame.
I have read ' Muslim League Attack on Sikhs and Hindus in the Punjab 1947' by Gurbachan Singh Talib. It was a brilliant account on how Hindus and Sikhs were attacked(slaughtered, murdered and raped) by Muslims. For that credit goes to Muslim league, Jawahar lal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi.
Books like this need to be read by everyone to learned the lesson that what our leaders did during those times. And we need to stop worshiping those leaders. Its not surprising why so many Hindus are decreasing in Bangladesh and Pakistan. The amount of atrocities they faced is horrifying.
Highly recommended.
I have read ' Muslim League Attack on Sikhs and Hindus in the Punjab 1947' by Gurbachan Singh Talib. It was a brilliant account on how Hindus and Sikhs were attacked(slaughtered, murdered and raped) by Muslims. For that credit goes to Muslim league, Jawahar lal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi.
Books like this need to be read by everyone to learned the lesson that what our leaders did during those times. And we need to stop worshiping those leaders. Its not surprising why so many Hindus are decreasing in Bangladesh and Pakistan. The amount of atrocities they faced is horrifying.
Highly recommended.
May 8, 2018
This book is a real eye-opener about the genocide of the Bengali Hindu population of East Pakistan and its causes. It highlights the blunders of Gandhi and Nehru and other Congress leaders in the days leading up to Partition, as opposed to the pragmatic attitude of Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee.
The book brings to focus how this enterprise was primarily a jihadist venture – for example, the affair of the Hazratbal theft in 1964 in Kashmir led to an orgy of killings of the Hindu population in East Pakistan, though they had nothing to do with the affair. In addition to the continuous low intensity pressure to leave or convert, excuses like these provided a perfect opportunity for a good round of Hindu bloodletting and temple destruction. Another telling example is how Ma Anandmayee’s Ashram and the historic Ramna Kali temple in Dhaka were destroyed and its monks and inhabitants butchered mercilessly in March 1971. Why? What was the provocation? Were they part of Mukti Bahini? No, they were kafirs for the killing.
http://www.mayerdak.com/root/ramna.htm
https://bengalvoice.blogspot.in/
The book brings to focus how this enterprise was primarily a jihadist venture – for example, the affair of the Hazratbal theft in 1964 in Kashmir led to an orgy of killings of the Hindu population in East Pakistan, though they had nothing to do with the affair. In addition to the continuous low intensity pressure to leave or convert, excuses like these provided a perfect opportunity for a good round of Hindu bloodletting and temple destruction. Another telling example is how Ma Anandmayee’s Ashram and the historic Ramna Kali temple in Dhaka were destroyed and its monks and inhabitants butchered mercilessly in March 1971. Why? What was the provocation? Were they part of Mukti Bahini? No, they were kafirs for the killing.
http://www.mayerdak.com/root/ramna.htm
https://bengalvoice.blogspot.in/
March 21, 2021
Heart wrenching.
November 17, 2018
Excellent book and a must-read
October 7, 2019
Even before I started reading the book, I knew that it would be a difficult read. Very difficult.
And it was.
Roy is a senior functionary of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and is currently the Governor of Tripura. So, if you have misgivings that whatever he may write is basically world as seen through the BJP prism, there is no quarrel with you.
But after finishing the 560-page book, this much I can say: so far the facts are concerned, Roy is spot on. As for the interpretation of facts, you may or may not agree with him, but you will find his arguments compelling.
My family roots are in Bangladesh, in Barisal. My mother’s family comes from Bikrampur area of Dacca. My in-laws are from Khulna. All the three families have migrated to India at the time of Partition or immediately thereafter. As a result, they were not directly affected by the riots of 1946, 1950 or 1964. But my mother used to recall “Dacca-r danga” she experienced when she was a little girl. So, the riots that Roy has enumerated are part of the collective family memories for millions of Bangals like us.
Is it really necessary to re-live all those agonies after all these years? Roy believes, yes. Because if a people forgets its own past, it basically emasculates itself. And if the past repeats itself in future it loses its ability to fight the demon.
Roy raises two very pertinent points: One, how the people of Bengal, both West Bengalis and those with East Bengali roots, allowed itself to forget a tragedy as cataclysmic as uprooting and expulsion of ten million people from their centuries-old homesteads? Two, how can the people of West Bengal be so blind as not to see that the same communal polarization is taking place in the border districts of the State and the threat of religious strife is getting bigger?
Roy has attempted some answers, which you may or may not agree with. But one thing is clear. Much of this shortsightedness is due to the queer philosophy that goes by the name of secularism in post-Independence India. In the first-past-the-post electoral system of the country, all the “secular” parties have discovered that cultivating Muslims – or, the Mollas, to be more precise – pays rich dividends in the hustings. As a result, they never bothered to look at the issue of Hindu persecution in East Pakistan/ Bangadesh for what it is: a slow ethnic cleansing. This is true of the Congress government that ruled the State till mid-70s. This is true of the perfidious Communists who ruled for over three decades. And it is equally true of the roguish regime that has followed, led by a maverick woman. And the agony of West Bengal continues.
Roy’s book is an important contribution on the subject. The bibliography at the end is very useful.
But will it serve any useful purpose other than being an addition in some interested bookshelves? If the plight of East Bengal Hindus has not been able to rouse the indignation of the Indian – especially Bengali – Hindus for over seventy years and we can carry on with our lives as if nothing unusual has happened, then the title of Tathagata Roy’s book can very well be the epitaph on the tombstone of the Hindu Bengali: My People, Uprooted.
And it was.
Roy is a senior functionary of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and is currently the Governor of Tripura. So, if you have misgivings that whatever he may write is basically world as seen through the BJP prism, there is no quarrel with you.
But after finishing the 560-page book, this much I can say: so far the facts are concerned, Roy is spot on. As for the interpretation of facts, you may or may not agree with him, but you will find his arguments compelling.
My family roots are in Bangladesh, in Barisal. My mother’s family comes from Bikrampur area of Dacca. My in-laws are from Khulna. All the three families have migrated to India at the time of Partition or immediately thereafter. As a result, they were not directly affected by the riots of 1946, 1950 or 1964. But my mother used to recall “Dacca-r danga” she experienced when she was a little girl. So, the riots that Roy has enumerated are part of the collective family memories for millions of Bangals like us.
Is it really necessary to re-live all those agonies after all these years? Roy believes, yes. Because if a people forgets its own past, it basically emasculates itself. And if the past repeats itself in future it loses its ability to fight the demon.
Roy raises two very pertinent points: One, how the people of Bengal, both West Bengalis and those with East Bengali roots, allowed itself to forget a tragedy as cataclysmic as uprooting and expulsion of ten million people from their centuries-old homesteads? Two, how can the people of West Bengal be so blind as not to see that the same communal polarization is taking place in the border districts of the State and the threat of religious strife is getting bigger?
Roy has attempted some answers, which you may or may not agree with. But one thing is clear. Much of this shortsightedness is due to the queer philosophy that goes by the name of secularism in post-Independence India. In the first-past-the-post electoral system of the country, all the “secular” parties have discovered that cultivating Muslims – or, the Mollas, to be more precise – pays rich dividends in the hustings. As a result, they never bothered to look at the issue of Hindu persecution in East Pakistan/ Bangadesh for what it is: a slow ethnic cleansing. This is true of the Congress government that ruled the State till mid-70s. This is true of the perfidious Communists who ruled for over three decades. And it is equally true of the roguish regime that has followed, led by a maverick woman. And the agony of West Bengal continues.
Roy’s book is an important contribution on the subject. The bibliography at the end is very useful.
But will it serve any useful purpose other than being an addition in some interested bookshelves? If the plight of East Bengal Hindus has not been able to rouse the indignation of the Indian – especially Bengali – Hindus for over seventy years and we can carry on with our lives as if nothing unusual has happened, then the title of Tathagata Roy’s book can very well be the epitaph on the tombstone of the Hindu Bengali: My People, Uprooted.
May 25, 2020
A must read for all Indians especially Bengalis....what the Bengalis of “Bengal” had to face again and again.....and how that history has been brushed under the carpet....
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews